Scaling Your Business

You know you need to change things when you run out of hours in the day, and there are still essential tasks not done.

Continuing as you are is destroying your life and your business.

Home is a great place to start a business, but you come to the point where your spare room isn’t enough. Scaling your operation means overcoming a new set of challenges.

Hosting Your WebsiteIf you don’t have a website, get one. A proper one with a proper domain and hosting so good you have to pay for it. Free hosting was fine to start, but now you have tested the waters, it is time to get something more professional.

If you do have a site, upgrade it. Cheap hosting will not cope with the increased number of hits your site will be getting. There are home business web hosting reviews you can check out, in order to track down the best deals available on the market.

As you can see in the HostAdvice.com screenshot above, good small business hosting is eminently affordable.

Scaling Your WorkforceYour business has suffered because you have done everything up to now. An employee could complete many of the tasks you have been losing sleep over.

Employees cost money; I hear you say.

When you take on an employee, that person generates profits for you over and above their wages and other costs.

Doing everything yourself is costing you money, too. Your business isn’t growing because you are working IN it rather than ON it. When someone you hire does the mundane tasks you did previously; it frees up your time to work on your company’s strategic growth.

The screenshot above shows some of the Upwork categories freelancers work in. There are people who love doing the jobs you hate, and they don’t cost a fortune to hire, even for someone with experience and excellent communication skills.

Delegate all the simple, mechanical tasks you dislike doing and free yourself up to network and look for new business.

Training and managing freelancers could consume all your freed-up time, so look at the advantages of paying someone to manage them for you.

Hiring freelancers means you don’t need an office, computers or phone lines for your employees. Even if you pay top dollar for the best freelancer, you have no costs apart from the hourly rate of pay.

Getting an OfficeIf you want to have someone else working there alongside you, your home office isn’t going to work. You will still need an office at home, but you also need somewhere to meet clients and for your employees to work.

Try co-working spaces as a first step, but avoid taking out long contracts in case it doesn’t work out. You could pay for dedicated desks alongside each other, but check the policy on talking in the work area because some co-working spaces have a silence policy except in social areas.If you decide to rent an office, you could just use it as a workspace and meet clients in a co-working space or at their own premises. If it’s only for you, you can skip the big-budget prestige location, though cleanliness and calm décor will help you recruit and keep the best staff.

Check out garden office buildings if you have enough space to put one. You can specify that you need a toilet and small kitchen and internal walls.

The screenshot above from GardenBuildingsDirect, a typical UK supplier shows just how reasonably priced this option is, though you have to add a concrete base and other extras to these prices.

Paying TaxYou have to pay tax, but you only pay it on profits. An accountant should be your first hire, and a lawyer your second. These two professionals will keep you legal and in business.Your accountant might be unhappy with your shoe-box accounting and ask you to buy accounts software. You need a tax and accounting program if you are paying employees because it’s the only way to communicate with HMRC.

Long Story ShortYour home business must grow to survive. Scaling will involve costs, but every additional outlay, from better hosting to freelance office employees and even a manager will pay for itself in extra business and extra profits.